Facet: Light Metal Packaging Methodology

By P.K.T. Oldring, F. Savrij Droste, R. Whitaker, D. Smith, C. O’Mahony, L. Castle

Light metal packaging for foodstuffs primarily encompasses cans, closures, and aerosols. For cans used in the European Union (EU), the majority are beverage cans with about 45 billion used per annum (pa) compared to approximately 20 billion food cans pa. Metal closures are subdivided into about 20 billion closures for jars and 80 billion crowns for bottles per year. The ILSI Monograph on Light Metal Packaging for Foodstuffs¹ contains background information for the reader unfamiliar with this type of packaging.

The FACET project (Flavours, Additives and food Contact materials Exposure Tool) was a four-year project that was partially funded by the European Commission within its Framework FP7 Programme. The project ran from September 2008 until August 2012. FACET was coordinated by University College Dublin and it involved 20 research partners from across Europe, coming from academia, industry, research centers, and small- to medium-sized enterprises.

Hearty et al. provided an early overview of the project plan² and Oldring et al.^3,4 offered a view of the part of the project plan that dealt specifically with packaging materials. More recently, the use of FACET for assessing exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) from light metal packaging has been reported.⁵

As the name indicates, the FACET expo-sure tool provides a single platform with the functionality to estimate consumer exposure to three types of food chemicals, namely chemical food additives (“E-numbers”), chemically defined flavoring substances added to foods, and substances used to make food contact materials. A PC-based desktop application, the FACET exposure tool is publicly available and free of charge.